


Paused

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-14
Updated: 2009-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe they could stop, just for a few hours.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paused

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Written for destina's birthday (a bit belated). She requested old photographs and probably didn't actually expect that I'd take her up on the sunshine and puppies part too. Thank you to laurificus for the wonderful beta.

It had taken an awful lot of rock salt just to take out one ghost. Sam didn't have Dean's track record (or Dad's, Sam thought, the ache of loss still fresh), but he'd gone up against enough ghosts to tell that this had been an unusual pain in the ass. A lot of cursing even by their standards, a lot of getting thrown against the wall, in addition to all the rock salt. But he and Dean had won; figured out the identity of the deceased, salted and burned the remains.

Sam rotated his injured shoulder, the hot prairie sun warming the muscles as he sat next to Dean on the steps of Susan Clough's porch, an irish setter puppy on his lap. Another puppy had his paws propped on Dean's thigh like he'd imprinted on Dean and didn't intend to let him move again ever.

The bruise on Dean's arm was still pale; in a day or so it would darken, then fade to yellow. Dean acted like it was no big deal. But Sam always felt the same heaviness in his stomach, the same wish that maybe they could stop. Just stop and get to sit on a porch like this without knowing that in a few hours they'd have to drive off to the next thing that wanted to rip them apart.

For now, though, the sun was warm, and the iced tea Ms. Clough had made for them was cold and sweet. A few nasty bruises that would fade and one dislocated shoulder, now fixed, wasn't a high price considering that they'd made Susan Clough feel safe in her own home again.

With his free hand, Sam shuffled through the photographs in the shoebox resting on the step next to him, while the dog stretched its snout up to lick Sam's nose.

Sam laughed. "Hey."

The puppy looked at him with big liquid eyes.

"No," said Dean.

"What?"

"No, we aren't keeping it. Neither of them."

"I wasn't going to even ask."

"You had that look on your face." Dean crunched at the remains of the ice from his glass.

"Right, the one you last saw when I was twelve."

Dean leaned back against the step, almost lying down as he turned his face up towards the sun. His freckles were already flaring brighter; later he'd complain about being sunburned. He pulled the puppy up onto his chest, and the dog settled there with a happy, snuffling sigh.

The other puppy sat on Sam's leg, struggling to keep balance, and Sam put his hand on the dog's back to hold it steady as he turned all his attention to the disorganized jumble of pictures in the box. They went back over a century. Some of them had led them to the identity of the ghost--a man who had owned the farm back in 1827, before Susan Clough's late husband's ancestors had bought the place. A nasty piece of work in life, in death he had been spiteful, his spirit kept dormant until Ms. Clough had brought in a contractor to knock out a few walls to expand the place into a bed and breakfast.

There were other pictures, too. Sepia-tinted photos of children in stiff clothes, their faces frozen without a smile; family portraits; pictures of the farmhouse as it had looked in the 19th century; black and white or color photos of many generations.

He lifted one out. It was black and white, and, based on the furniture, was probably from the 1930's. A little girl sat in a chair with a baby on her lap, her skinny arms curved around him. She stared right into the camera, a closed-mouth smile curving across her face, something defiant in her gaze.

Sam dropped the picture back into the box, and continued to sort through pictures of Robert Clough as a child, and then pictures of Susan and Robert on their honeymoon.

An entire life in a box. He and Dean had one too, stashed in the bottom layer of items in the Impala's trunk.

It amazed Sam that there could be so little difference between what they had in their rootlessness, and what was in this shoebox belonging to a woman who had lived in the same house for thirty years. Sure, there were a lot more generations captured in the pictures in the shoebox--but just because he and Dean didn't have the photos, didn't mean they didn't exist, had never existed. He and Dean came from somewhere.

Dean yawned, shifting position, and the puppy stood up with its paws against his chest, shook itself, then leapt down, collar jangling. The one Sam was holding got wriggly, so he released it and the two rust-colored dogs went chasing each other across the lawn.

"We should go soon," Dean said.

"Yeah." Sam closed the lid of the shoebox.

At least they had stopped here, for a little while.

When Dean stood up, his shadow fell over Sam. For a moment Sam thought he'd say _time to get a move on, kiddo_.

"So," Dean said, moving so the warmth of the sun hit Sam full-on again. "You want more iced tea?"

~end


End file.
